UT Austin's Environmental Engineering Professor Richard Corsi was recently awarded a $2.9 million research grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a new graduate program at the university aimed at studying indoor environmental quality. The five-year grant was propelled by studies indicating that most of us spend a whopping 18 hours inside for every hour outside, and that air quality indoors can often be much worse than we thought:

“The indoor environment is not the safe, clean sanctuary we thought it was,” Corsi said. “In fact, the exposure of Americans to toxic substances is dominated by what we breathe and touch while we are indoors. We really do very little in our country to improve the quality of indoor environments in non-industrial settings... we need more engineers, scientists, and social scientists engaged in improving knowledge related to indoor environmental quality, solving related problems and educating the public on the do’s and don’ts in their own homes.”

Corsi, already endowed with the E. C. H. Bantel Professorship for Professional Practice, claims that indoor radon and air pollution combined make up the biggest environmental threat to the American populace. A study publshed in March by the California Air Resources Board further suggests that both may account for "billions of dollars" in hidden health and economic costs.

The fledgling program, part of UT's College of Engineering, is to include internship partnerships with the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, access to the J.J. Pickle Research Campus, and a two-year funding commitment for up to 28 doctorate students.